Coma

The book starts out with a woman, Nancy Greenly, going to the Boston Memorial Hospital because she is having

an extra heavy period. After being examined, she is going to have an operation in OR room 8. Something happens during

the operation, and Nancy becomes brain dead.

Susan Wheeler, a medical student, is waking up for her first day in the field after two years of studying to become a

medical doctor. She is very attractive with blond hair. She has blue, brown, and flecks of green in her eyes. When she

and five other medical students go the Boston Memorial Hospital, all that the nurses think of them is that they are nuisances.

They find Mark Bellows, who will be watching over them while they were staying at the hospital. Bellows plans to give a

lecture every morning, and have one of the students give a lecture every afternoon. After they go to an OR room to see a

real operation, they see Nancy Greenly and Susan is shocked at what happened to her. Bellows tells her that the chance of

something like that happening is one in one hundred thousand. When Bellows is talking to them, Susan gets paged and is

needed to start an I.V. The patient, Sean Berman is having a minor knee surgery. When Sean is in surgery, the same thing

that happened to Nancy Greenly happens to him too, and Susan decides to research the topic for her third year report and

find out why these two things have happened in such a short time when the chances are so slim.

This is my least favorite part. The first thing that Susan does is go to the hospital library to research coma. She

finds out that no one really knows why anyone goes into a coma, and that the subject is so vast it is unbelievable. She

writes down everything she finds out in her notebook. She then finds the main computer of the hospital and fills out a

request form for all cases of coma occurring to inpatients which were unrelated to the patients known disease. She didn't

sign her name, though, and when someone else put their request in the box she put it under his so that the information would

be sent to that person who was Henry Schwartz. When he got his information with Susan's on the bottom, she told him

that there was a mix-up and her request was put with his, so he gave her the bottom part of the printout. The printout

showed that there had been twelve cases including Berman that had gone into a coma for no apparent reason and their

brains had been destroyed. That was one hundred times above the national average. Two patients also died that day from

respiratory arrest, according to Bellows. Susan then went down to the Pathology Lab, where the autopsies took place, to

find out about the patients.

The next day, Susan woke up very tired. She had already skipped some lectures, but Bellows was covering for

her. Susan went to the Chief of Medicine to him tell him about her findings, but he did not support her, and he took the

printout away from her. Susan thought the only reason that he did that was because she was a medical student and she

was female. She then went to see Dr. Robert Harris, who is the Chief of Anesthesia, but he did not appreciate her trying to

figure this huge problem out. All Harris thinks is that the only reason females become doctors is that it is a fad or something

along that line. Susan tells him off, and Harris completely blows up at her. Susan tells Bellows she wants to go the

Jefferson Institute to see Berman because that is where he was transferred to.

Bellows gets taken off one of his cases to talk to Dr. George Chandler. Chandler tells him that a locker was found

that was filled with drugs and it was the locker that was given to him. Bellows told him that it used to be his locker, but he

had a new one now because Dr. Walters gave it to him.

Susan went to see the Chief of Surgery, Dr. Howard Stark, to talk to him about the things she had found out.

Stark thought that maybe she was a bit young, but is interested in what she is trying to do. He also thinks ,though, that

Susan should drop the whole thing, just like Bellows does, because it will be a long and hard journey.

Susan went and bought a nurse uniform, and then went to the City Hall to get a copy of the floor plans of the

Jefferson Institute. She went back to the Boston Memorial Hospital to talk to Dr. Donald McLeary to see if she could get

the charts for the coma victims. Not only does McLeary turn her down, but he also wants her to stop her quest. He calls

Dr. Oren in to deal with Susan, and tells Susan to stay put. Since she never goes to the lectures and is making everyone

mad in the hospital, she gets kicked out of the hospital. She starts to walk toward the city library, and notices someone is

following her. She gets to the library and thinks she lost him, but then she notices him again. She goes down to the subway

and just misses a train. When she sees the man walking toward her, she jumps down by the tracks. She falls a few times,

and narrowly misses getting fried by the electrified tracks. When she sees a train coming, she falls again and she almost

gets hit, but the train stops a few feet away from her. She's okay but notices that she is uncontrollably shaking and

everyone is staring